The simple question that confuses the Kantian:

The simple question that confuses the Kantian:

Why should I follow the categorical imperative?

Attached: 8D1822A2-8DCB-47AD-B412-DD50FF09C028.jpg (800x1152, 108.71K)

He explains why in the second critique, though his argument is not very good

You'll go to hell if you don't.

Kant wrote like 1000 pages on this?

He didn't follow it himself and had to cover all the clocks in his house with sheets.

Getting filtered by the Kant's ethics is the surest sign of midwittery, you belong on reddit.

This isn't even a question of whether you believe in it or not, but if you can't find any greater reasoning (that is: any greater value) for or against Kant's ethics, then you have no vision or intellect at all.

You didn't respond.

Pretty sad that his entire philosophy is unfounded and can be defeated by a single word (“why?”). Although, this goes for many others.

>Although, this goes for many others.
Yeah, virtually all of them. I’ve found that the moral philosophy with the most satisfying defense responds to the question “why” with the simple “because I prefer it.”
>I am by nature full of preferences, I cannot justify why I should or should not do anything without them. I should do that which leads to the most preferable outcomes simply because I would prefer that outcome above the rest.
>”why?”
>Because I prefer it
It doesn’t get any more intuitive than that. It’s like asking why we eat food. We eat simply because we prefer to eat. I could try to be sneaky and say that I eat because it keeps me alive, or some extended reasoning like this, but this is based on a preference itself: to live. Not only does it make sense to seek the preferable, but it also makes no sense to seek the non-preferable. By definition, it is less preferable. When choosing between that elusive most preferable life (in accordance with the preferences of the individual), and between the life of a perfect utilitarian, or a perfect Kantian, or a perfect virtue ethicist, etc., if any of these “‘moral” lives are less preferable than the most preferable life, then there would be no good reason to pursue them. They are, by measure of the individual himself, inferior.

Attached: More is always better.jpg (400x281, 25.3K)

The answer is in the question. You are looking for a reason to do things. The categorical imperative just clarifies which reasons make sense and which do not.

By it's very nature the categorical imperative is: categorical, applying in all situations absolutely and unambiguously; and an imperative, an overriding and authoritative command. If you properly apprehend it, then you won't need to ask why. It is self-motivating.

Attached: 1647990009627.jpg (423x617, 27.84K)

>The categorical imperative just clarifies which reasons make sense and which do not
make sense according to who? Why should I trust it?
Why exactly is it imperative?

>The simple question that confuses the Kantian
It doesn't. If you're too dumb to understand why, you shouldn't be here and you especially shouldn't discuss Kant.

One thing I never understood is why lying, or any other action, is universally wrong. There are obviously different circumstances under which lying can take place. In some instances, not lying can actually make you look like a dick, and it can needlessly harm someone. So why does it follow that lying is always against the categorical imperative? Just because I don’t think I should lie in a specific circumstance doesn’t mean I think all people should never lie.

So I could always make my circumstance more specific as a condition to whatever action I’m considering as being moral or not. Even if I killed someone, I would not say that it is a categorical imperative to kill someone. Maybe I killed because a man tried to rape my daughter with a knife in his hand. Does this mean I support killing indiscriminately? Obviously not. Every circumstance is unique, and so it is difficult to universalize it.

>Why should I trust it?

Because it's an extension of your own intuition, which is the only verifiable index of experience. You can play rhetorical games about "why" that is, but you are still a subject to the object of the question "why." You haven't transcended it, nor can "why" ever transcend itself. That's not a logical rule -- it's something left to your personal account, something to be directly experienced.

There is a limit to intellectual understanding and ratiionalism. Kant addresses this pretty clearly IMO. The largest responsibility of all philosophy is not in any text, but in the reader.

The categorical imperative is whatever choice you have to make to live in accordance with the principles which synthesize your life. This is not a rational, academic, or cerebral decision -- it is an idealist one. The idealism is in the belief that elevating one's powers of understanding regarding their faculties of sensibility, receptivity, and insight (among others) naturally proceeds toward virtue. Much in line with Spinoza's ethics (who I think really did a more complete and accessible job of explaining it).

See The only common moral trait among humans across thousands of years of history, the various locations in the world, age, sex, race, net worth, physical ability, religious and philosophical beliefs, intelligence, life experience, etc. is the seeking of preferable experiences. From there it only seems sensible to figure out roughly what decisions you should make to attain a more preferable life. No need to pretend that the categorical imperative is “intuitive.” Or that we need a deontological moral system to guide our lives. The goal of morality can never be outside of our preferences, else it would be useless.

Leviathan finna eat your soul.

People don’t generally like lying because they wouldn't want others to lie to them constantly. People who see nothing wrong with lying have low empathy.

You seem to have completely misread what I said. Do you think lying can be acceptable under certain circumstances? Then you agree with me

every "acceptable" lie hide a future pain too. there is no point in lying at all.

>tfw categorical imperative
>want to become carpenter
>should be a universal law to become a carpenter?
>everyone a carpenter
>starve to death
>dont become a carpenter

I think we're close to saying a similar thing, but we're using intuition differently by shades. The whole appeal to preference is essentially Spinoza's proposal, which I agree with.

I think there is a misunderstanding about this being a 'system' to be taught and adhered to within certain bounds, although I know all the 18th - 19th century guys liked frameworks. One does not imitate or learn virtue, one is virtuous and so behaves virtuously through the pursuit of better understanding one's preferences, their origin, their effects.
In my (rhetorical) view, preference alone is basically hedonistic and mono-dimensional. I think, idealistically, honest preference -- intuition -- would lead to the same virtue -- that's at the heart of all of this -- but the work of the philosophy is to draw out and critique the common errors brought about by the thinking mind (e.g. pleasure = good = that's my preference, difficulty = bad = that's not my preference). This also addresses the problem of lying brought up earlier -- does the preference against lying supersede the preference for having one's own way? What other preferences become entangled? How then do we chart a course to the "real" preference, and do we know it is actually what we prefer, or merely what we think we prefer? Is there a difference? Why, why not? There is philosophical intrigue here because a preference is not just a preference -- it is also implicit to consequences, which feed back into those preferences. Yet we do not make choices stumbling around in the dark like that.
We temper our preferences according to an internal moral system. We might prefer the strawberry ice cream, yet leave the last scoop for our daughter. We might prefer having sex with 10/10s, but marry our 6/10 fiance because she meets our emotional needs and our preference for physical features might be literally transformed through our affection anyway. Understanding these transformations, the action and flux of preference, is the entire idea.

Again, the guy is literally a "transcendental idealist." There necessarily exists a healthy dose of optimism and idealism in the philosophy -- which would itself be a 'preference,' or (depending on perspective
/ preference) preferences could be a subset within the philosophy, like check marks for intuition. It's a model for how those things aggregate and relate to each other, whether you learn the 'system' or not. Ultimately, yeah, there's 'no need' for any of it. Everyone's doing their best, the end. The idealism is believing anyone can have better or more complete ideas about what "their best" means, to them, personally, and that this constitutes their (at least, likely) imperatives.

i tried to type it out but realised i can't really remember properly. He does talk about this extensively though and anyone who'd call themselves a 'kantian' would surely know the answer. I remember thinking the way he gets there does seem to make nice sense though. It's in 'groundwork for the metaphysics of morals', very short book.

Because you already are

What has anything of that to do with Kant? Seriously, how low is the level on this board?

not an argument

Why should someone answer to you? Git gud!

The sum of all categorical imperatives and the sum of all conscious decisions of every human being are permutable ensembles

>Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
>A principle thousands of years old and repurposed by an autistic, virgin G*rm
>Philosophers: omg he's soooo smart, have intellectual sex with my brain sexy German man.
It's just a meme, bro. You do whatever you want. YOLO.

>Again, the guy is literally a "transcendental idealist." There necessarily exists a healthy dose of optimism and idealism in the philosophy
why would anyone write in a thread about philosophy while having a sub-wikipedia understanding of it. this board is pure shit lmao

If one follows it, it's okay. If we all do, the world would end. Fuck Kant, dumb Prussian coffee sucking moron; Read nothing, literature is a fucking waste of time and is for dumb people like Cunt

Why not?

because no one has yet presented an argument that we should, including (you)

It's an ontological argument: you have to because of the definition.

but why should one accept the existence of categorical norms in the first place

>preferable experiences.
which is just hedonism.

because you are an atheist, and like any other humanist you are completely fucking lost and still long for some third-party validation of your actions

>atheist
>any other humanist
Kek. You really think, Kant was an atheist, don't you? Just because your fundamentalist telephangelist said so?

To my understanding, Kant argues for voluntarily following the categorical imperative as a means to realising a transcendental self against the determined phenomenal world. Your psychology, including your desires and preferences are part of the world conditioned by space and time, and thus thoroughly determined by those categories. The categorical imperative doesn't transcent this world, but is transcendental in that it sublimates the determinations of the phenomwnal world. You would be interested in achieving this if you had anxiety as to your free will or moral autonomy, given that any decision made not in line with the categorical imperative will be determined by the categories of experience, and not the synthetic but still a priori principles of your judgement. The only way to get out of the vicious circularity of moral agency and determinism is to act as a transcendental self, not a psychological ego. The foundations of this view, mainly the possibility of a transcendental self, are laid in the Critique of Pure Reason which critiques the determinism of iur judgement.

>a simple question
>follow the categorical imperative
>categorical
>should
user, go to bed

u shouldnt

We have a winner!

Attached: url(226).jpg (1200x675, 83.42K)

nah just because Kant said so. Humanism is only compatible with atheism.

Duty to reason, that's Kant's answer. Either you're a beast or not.

...and now, say it in simple words.

Too bad there is no higher self in the first place, huh.

Kant is the first humanist desperate to virtue signal, and it all sterile circle jerking.

It fucks over all philosophy. Only thing to do is just ignore it.

Attached: munchhausen.png (1002x1600, 273.82K)

It doesn't, because brute facts exist.

If you accept the prong of the trilemma with brute facts it's not an issue. But people don't like to admit they rely on brute facts since they're impossible to justify by definition.

>since they're impossible to justify
No, they're impossible to justify with reason, not by definition. Aristotle always argued they were justifiable simply based on intuition, in the same way that one intuits things visually without relying on circular logic or infinite regress to validate that what one is seeing is in fact the color red.

>No, they're impossible to justify with reason
That's what I mean by justification. If someone tells me something is true because they feel it is I'm going to laugh at them.

So basically this all goes out the window when we realize the thing-in-itself doesnèt exist? Sick.

>but is transcendental in that it sublimates the determinations of the phenomwnal world
Gesundheit.
But seriously, what do you mean by this?

because you will never be in the wrong. IDK why everyone's writing paragraphs. He made an internally consistent and universally applicable code, regardless of contextualities.

It's not because they feel it is, it's because it is true. You laugh at people because they acknowledge reality as it is, and you think you are somehow more enlightened for thinking that nothing exists when the contrary is clearly obvious to anyone with a developed mind who doesn't put all of their eggs in one weak, frayed basket.

>It's not because they feel it is, it's because it is true.
But they have no way to justify that using reason. I can say that whatever they was wrong and claim that as intuition just as easily.

BTFO
What do you mean by wrong?

That's not what he's referring to as intuition. He means something more akin to direct experience.

>Why should I follow the categorical imperative
I'll try.
Because, in asking the question, you presuppose reason. Doing something implies its permissibility. Therefore, it would be irrational to do something you would not want others to.

There are only two strong objections to CI, imo. The one was made contemporary to Kant, regarding how CI handles a situation where the only courses of action fail the standards he outlines. The second is any given philosophy which allows a person to say "I do not have to abide by the same rules as anyone else,". Which is keyed and lockpilled.

Ok I can contradict what he thinks is true and claim direct experience told me so. Again brute facts derived from intuition or direct experience are not justifiable using reason. If they were justifiable using reason they wouldn't be brute facts. If your answer to me asking why is that you directly experience the truth of something I'm going to laugh at you.

as in having inconsistencies. With whatever given knowledge x, y, z, etc. You can be confident in your decision if you follow the imperative. even if its some weird matrix shit where opening a door nob is actually illusionary and you are snapping your sons neck instead. Or some other form of unknown or chance.

>Ok I can contradict what he thinks is true and claim direct experience told me so.
But direct reason *wouldn't* have told you so because then it wouldn't be a fact but a contradiction lol. We are talking about brute facts.
> I'm going to laugh at you.
get over yourself

>But direct reason *wouldn't* have told you so because then it wouldn't be a fact but a contradiction lol
And the exact same argument from can be directed at him by me. He can't have directly experienced the truth he claims to have since it would contradict the truth I directly experienced. You're starting to get why claiming brute facts from intuition or direct experience or feeling leads nowhere.